Sen. Ted Cruz, a high-profile speaker at The IDC Summit for Middle East Christians in Washington, D.C., was booed off the stage last night by a gathering of religious and political leaders concerned about the persecution of Christians in the Middle East.

What led to this unexpected outcome?

Near the beginning of his address, Cruz implied that the government of Syria was no better than ISIS or al-Qaida, and that “we shouldn’t try to parse different manifestations of evil that are on a murderous rampage through the region.”

He then insisted that “Christians have no greater ally than Israel,” at which point members of the crowd began to yell “stop it” and booed him.

Given his comments, and his response to the people who reacted by booing, it appears Cruz has no meaningful exposure to the actual experience of Middle Eastern Christians, nor does it seem he is even aware that there are millions of Middle Eastern Christians (and Jews, for that matter) who are strongly opposed to the official political and military policies of the modern state of Israel.

The phrase that ignited the disagreement is particularly telling: “Christians have no greater ally than Israel.”

What kind of worldview or theological bias would allow for such a statement? Only one that presumes there is a definite conformity between the needs and desires of Christians everywhere and the Middle East policy of the United States of America. It seems to me, in other words, that when Ted Cruz says “Christians have no greater ally than Israel,” he really means that “America has no greater ally than Israel” — and that the subjects of those two sentences are identical in his mind.

Such an idea, so disconnected from the personal suffering and experiences of the actual Christians who live in the Middle East, found little sympathy in a Washington, D.C. ballroom crowded with Christians from Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, and surrounding lands.

Fr. Christopher Metropulos, the Executive Director of the Orthodox Christian Network and a Greek Orthodox priest from Florida, was in attendance.

“I have never seen anything like this before,” Fr. Chris said. “Clearly, Cruz was out of his league and didn’t know the audience he was speaking to. They were highly offended by what he said, and, rather than backing off, he just kept digging in his heels. A huge mistake, leading to a sour moment in what was a very good conference.”

To learn more about the experience of Middle Eastern Christians, please listen to Fr. Chris’ interview with His Eminence Metropolitan Joseph of the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of North America. Members of Metropolitan Joseph’s family have been killed and wounded in the current crisis, and he notes that nearly every family in his American Archdiocese has been impacted in some way. “We cannot accept the Middle East without Christians,” the Metropolitan says. “That would be an unforgivable crime.”

Ted Cruz is firmly in the pocket of AIPAC, bought and paid for. That he would take the lectern with no concern at all for the struggles of the churches of the Middle East (against ISIS, yes, but also against a number of other hostile and repressive governments including those of Egypt and Israel), is hardly a surprise to me. It's somewhat amusing, though, to watch the Tea Party brain-deads fall over themselves praising Cruz as 'principled' and possessing 'character' for parroting to a marginal and fairly poor group exactly what the entire Washington foreign policy establishment (Democrats and Republicans) has believed all along.

Some more blood, Chekov. The needle won't hurt, Chekov. Take off your shirt, Chekov. Roll over, Chekov. Breathe deeply, Chekov. Blood sample, Chekov! Marrow sample, Chekov! Skin sample, Chekov! If I live long enough... I'm going to run out of samples.

Not an expert on US politicians, but I've seen it suggested this was his plan all along; get booed off stage by an anti-Israel group to drum up votes and support from the pro-Israel lobby. How plausible does that sound?

Gray Riders wrote:Not an expert on US politicians, but I've seen it suggested this was his plan all along; get booed off stage by an anti-Israel group to drum up votes and support from the pro-Israel lobby. How plausible does that sound?

If it wasn't his plan originally, that's almost certainly what he decided to do when the audience turned hostile. My expectation was that it was his plan all along, though, and that the audience there wasn't the audience he was speaking to. Politicians like Ted Cruz have some capable people working with and ahead of him to figure these things out.

Ted Cruz is an ass, and in my opinion people really shouldn't be listening to him and he certainly shouldn't be considered a representation of the United States. Just a more radical subset of the country. And in that subset, he's just about as radical as they come.

James wrote:If it wasn't his plan originally, that's almost certainly what he decided to do when the audience turned hostile. My expectation was that it was his plan all along, though, and that the audience there wasn't the audience he was speaking to. Politicians like Ted Cruz have some capable people working with and ahead of him to figure these things out.

Ted Cruz is an ass, and in my opinion people really shouldn't be listening to him and he certainly shouldn't be considered a representation of the United States. Just a more radical subset of the country. And in that subset, he's just about as radical as they come.

I'll agree with that Ted Cruz is an ass, certainly, and a radical ass at that. And for so publicly spitting on a group of the most threatened and marginalised people in the world, he deserves to be run out of Washington on a particularly sharp, splintery rail. But judging from a brief and wholly unscientific survey of the comments and 'likes' currently on the IDC page, sadly, I don't think he is alone.

Even 'moderate' pro-Israel liberals seem to be trying to shame the organisers and attendees of the IDC gala for being anti-Semites, as though it was a dogmatic demand of the Christian creed that Israel must be supported vocally at all costs. I think you're right that Cruz had this planned out; he knew he could count on a certain degree of positive backlash and continued assurance of AIPAC support for pulling his stunt at this event. Now, I'm not anti-Israel - I think Jews have as much right to a homeland as anyone, and the Levant as logical a place for it as any - but I think the uncritically pro-Israel climate in this country, which makes such shameless stunts pay positive political dividends, needs to change.

Some more blood, Chekov. The needle won't hurt, Chekov. Take off your shirt, Chekov. Roll over, Chekov. Breathe deeply, Chekov. Blood sample, Chekov! Marrow sample, Chekov! Skin sample, Chekov! If I live long enough... I'm going to run out of samples.